


Ode to Pedro

by MilkMoustachesAreCool



Series: Music Is My Life [2]
Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: M/M, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 07:34:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4598271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkMoustachesAreCool/pseuds/MilkMoustachesAreCool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Balthazar shook his head and looked at the ground. What to say? It looked like no wouldn’t be taken as an acceptable answer, but he didn’t want to make any promises either – he wasn’t sure if he’d even be able to pull this off.</p><p>“I’ll see what I can do,” he said finally, looking up. “I can’t promise anything though, I might not be able to come up with anything half decent.”</p><p>“Fair enough,” grinned Pedro. “I’m sure you will though, you’re pretty talented at that stuff.”</p><p>And that was how Balthazar had ended up sitting in his bedroom, guitar in hand, trying to come up with lyrics that somehow managed to portray how great Pedro was without portraying just how great Balthazar thought Pedro was. Impossible? Nah, surely not. Ridiculously difficult? Definitely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ode to Pedro

**Author's Note:**

> Okay sorry it's taken me so long to add to this series, I've been going through a bit of an existential crisis regarding my writing (and life in general), but it's all good, I'm back, and hopefully it won't take me so long to get the next one up.
> 
> Hope you enjoy :)
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own the song An Ode, it was written and performed by Reuben Hudson, I'm just quoting it.

“Oh my God Balthazar, you should write a song for Pedro’s campaign!” squealed Beatrice in excitement. They were sitting around the lunch table discussing different ideas to get Pedro elected. Balthazar just laughed in response.

“No that’s actually a really good idea though,” commented Ursula. Balthazar looked up at her, giving her the subtlest glare he could manage. Apparently she didn’t notice however, because she went on. “Everyone at school loves your music, it could definitely increase Pedro’s chances. And look at this way: Pedro has the sports side of the school covered, but you could bring in the artsy side for him too. Plus it would be good exposure for your music.” Ursula raised her eyebrows a fraction at Balthazar, so that only he noticed – but he did notice. Ursula was definitely pushing for this on purpose, and Balthazar could have strangled her.

“I mean it would be pretty awesome if you could do it,” added Pedro. “No pressure or anything though.”

Balthazar shook his head and looked at the ground. What to say? It looked like no wouldn’t be taken as an acceptable answer, but he didn’t want to make any promises either – he wasn’t sure if he’d even be able to pull this off.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said finally, looking up. “I can’t promise anything though, I might not be able to come up with anything half decent.”

“Fair enough,” grinned Pedro. “I’m sure you will though, you’re pretty talented at that stuff.”

And that was how Balthazar had ended up sitting in his bedroom, guitar in hand, trying to come up with lyrics that somehow managed to portray how great Pedro was without portraying just how great Balthazar thought Pedro was. Impossible? Nah, surely not. Ridiculously difficult? Definitely.

Balthazar stared at the empty notebook page in front of him. Where to begin? Maybe if he jotted down some of Pedro’s best traits he could do something with them. He picked his pen up and chewed on it for a moment. What were Pedro’s best traits?

-All Round Great Guy

He jotted the short phrase down. Everyone called Pedro that, but what exactly did it even mean? What made Pedro so great? Balthazar threw his pen down again in frustration. He spent ninety percent of his time thinking about how great Pedro was and now he couldn’t think of a single good thing about him. What was that all about?

Okay, that wasn’t technically true. Balthazar could think of plenty of good things about Pedro, just not necessarily things he could use as song lyrics in front of the rest of the school. In fact, Balthazar admitted to himself, the reasons he liked Pedro were all the private things that other people didn’t know. So how was he supposed to write a song using only material that the rest of the world knew already? What did the rest of the world know already anyway? That Pedro was really good at football?

“I see you running round the football field,” tried Balthazar, humming the words quietly as he strummed some vague chords on his guitar.

“You run circles round that ball,  
Just like the circles you’ve been running around me,  
Since the day I began to fall–”

Balthazar stopped playing impatiently. Well that certainly wouldn’t work. Maybe a new train of thought would prove more useful. What else did others admire about Pedro? His leadership skills?

“You take control when we are lost in the dark,  
Lead the way back into the light,  
You take me by the hand,  
Open up my eyes,  
Wish I could open up your heart–”

Nope. That wouldn’t work either. Balthazar strummed a chord angrily, letting it ring out. What was the problem? Why couldn’t he write something without it turning into an admission of his feelings? Was this just a hopeless endeavour?

Balthazar looked around his room, hoping to find inspiration somewhere. His eyes fell on the keyboard in the corner. He looked back down at his guitar, which was still sounding his angry chord. A new thought occurred to him.

He put his guitar down carefully and went to set the keyboard up. He could play both instruments reasonably well (along with pretty much any other instrument known to man), but the guitar was definitely his primary instrument. It was the one he was most comfortable on, the one he knew inside out. His hands knew their way around the strings better than Balthazar knew the details of Pedro’s face – and that was really saying something.

But maybe that was the problem. Maybe the guitar was too familiar for Balthazar to be able to write something more distant about Pedro. He couldn’t lie to the guitar, or hide things from it. But the keyboard – perhaps that would give him the distance and unfamiliarity he needed to write this song.

He placed his notebook and pen on his lap as he began playing some vague notes. Let’s try this again, he thought to himself.

“Known him this long,  
Never seen him do no wrong,” he sang softly, experimentally. So far so good.

“There’s one thing I’ve found,  
We all seem to find,  
That there’s just not enough Pedro  
To go around.”

That was actually half decent, thought Balthazar. He quickly opened his notebook before the lyrics fell out of his head. He would need to adjust the melody and piano accompaniment a bit later, but the lyrics might just work. In fact, he could even work off that theme – there’s just not enough Pedro to go around. He could make the song a bit of a joke, talking about how everyone wants some Pedro but Pedro still hasn’t found someone that he wants yet.

In fact, Balthazar thought as he reviewed the lyrics he had, perhaps his approach so far had been somewhat flawed. Perhaps he didn’t need to hide his feelings throughout this song at all. Perhaps he could get away with disguising them in vague statements about what ‘everybody’ (code for Balthazar) wants and thinks. Perhaps this could be a sort of love song in disguise – an ode? Balthazar had always thought of the word ode as having a bit of a hidden meaning. You can write an ode about pretty much anything – Ode to Joy, Ode to a Nightingale – but there’s always something more in them, or so Balthazar thought. Ode to Pedro – that sounded safe enough, right? And no one would be any the wiser as to what it actually meant to Balthazar. Balthazar grinned to himself as he scribbled the phrase down.

Okay, a first verse was what he needed now – something about how everyone wanted Pedro to find somebody.

“It seems it’s about time,  
That these words were spoken,” he mumbled, not minding the slight hidden meaning there – it was certainly about time that Balthazar spoke some words, not that he was actually planning on speaking them.

“With all these people,  
Saying that they’re hoping.” ‘All these people’ being code for Balthazar, he smirked to himself.

“For this all round great guy,  
To have someone by his side,  
Well that picture would look alright.” That picture that Balthazar saw in his mind every time he laid eyes on Pedro. The picture of Pedro clasping Balthazar’s hand tight, their hands fitting perfectly together.

Balthazar grabbed his notebook again and jotted down the new lyrics for the opening verse (as well as a small note to use something about their hands fitting together in one of his personal songs later). Meanwhile, he needed a closing line for the first verse – something to rhyme reasonably with guy, side or alright. Might? Lies? Type? Something about who Pedro’s type was? Balthazar smirked to himself again. Thing was, he was the only one who knew what Pedro’s type was, because he was the only one who knew that Pedro’s type was pretty much anyone.

“’Cause he’s Pedro, he’s anybody’s type?” Was that too cruel a hint to throw in there? No one else would notice surely, but would Pedro notice? If he did would he mind?

Balthazar wrote it down anyway. He would come back to this later and decide whether to keep it or not.

Balthazar tapped his pencil against his notebook as he sat back for a moment. Where to go next? Should he try and distance himself from his feelings once more and focus on how other people saw Pedro? Or should he keep using his own thoughts and feelings but putting them in the mouths of other people? Both options seemed somehow untrue to himself.

His mind suddenly flashed back to a conversation he had with his sister, way back when he had first noticed Pedro in Year Nine. He was lying on the floor in his sister’s room going on and on about how great this guy in his class was, and Rosa’s response was short and simple:

“Well, from what you’ve told me today the guy seems pretty perfect for you,” she had smiled supportively.

And then again a year or two later when Balthazar’s friends had started to notice Balthazar’s not-so-subtle infatuation, Rosa had reiterated the statement, following it up with a sly smile and a cheeky comment:

“And I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks so either.”

Those words in mind, Balthazar placed his hands on the keyboard again and played the last chord of the last verse, leading into something new.

“From what you’ve told me  
He seems like he could be  
The one for you,” he sang hesitantly.

“I don’t think I’m the only one  
Who feels this way  
About the both of you,” he trailed off, still unsure.

Was that too obvious? Would people be able to tell that these were Rosa’s words to Balthazar? He bit his lip in thought but then grabbed his pen and notebook again and scribbled them down quickly. Screw it, what if people could tell? Most of his friends already had an idea about his feelings for Pedro anyway, and Pedro seemed so dense about it that Balthazar could probably send him a valentine’s card and Pedro would still just think it was a stupid joke or something. This verse would stay for the moment, unless he could think of something else.

Besides, thought Balthazar rebelliously, what if Pedro did figure it out? Would that be the worst thing ever? Maybe Balthazar wanted Pedro to know – at least he could finally get an answer that way. But the biggest fear was that the answer wouldn’t be the one Balthazar wanted, and he wasn’t sure he could cope with that. Hence, his secret remained a secret.

Moving on, Balthazar thought to himself quickly, not wanting to get caught up in how pathetic he was. What would come next? A chorus? He glanced down to see what he had written earlier, but his eye was caught by a scribble on the side of the page – hands fitting together.

“Would he look good next to you?  
Would his hand fit in yours?  
I bet it would  
Better than any other guy’s ever could.”

He sang softly, quietly, experimentally. He hadn’t planned on using that idea in this song, but it did seem to fit, and he liked the imagery. He had always noticed Pedro’s large hands and thought that his own would fit very nicely in them. And to Pedro it would probably just sound like another silly line in this faux-love song he would hear. Balthazar took a deep breath and wrote it down, following it with the title of the song.

“This is an ode to Pedro.”

He was taking more and more risks with this song, but he decided he didn’t care – after all, Pedro would never believe any of it and no one else would be surprised by it, so what did matter?

Balthazar’s heart sank a little bit as he reminded himself that it had never mattered, really, because Pedro had never shown the slightest interest in Balthazar outside of friendship. Realistically, Pedro was bound to find someone else – anyone else – and be happy with them forever as Balthazar was forced to watch in silence, because just being friends with Pedro was better than nothing.

“I reckon he’ll find someone,” sang Balthazar, somewhat bitterly.

“And I’ve got no idea who it’ll be  
Out of everyone.”

That wasn’t quite true – he didn’t know who Pedro would find, but he did know that it wouldn’t be himself. That was all that mattered.

Balthazar was suddenly feeling terrible about everything – himself, Pedro, life in general. He had no energy left to come up with new lyrics, so instead he decided to move the first thing he had written to the end then add on a repeat of the “would he look good next to you” section. That would have to do. He closed his notebook, turned his keyboard off and texted Ursula and Pedro.

-Song is finished. –Balth

Balthazar threw himself back on his bed and rubbed his temple. Writing songs usually made him feel better about things, but this had had the opposite effect. He felt terrible. He sighed and hoped that Pedro, Ursula, Beatrice and everyone else appreciated the song, because writing it really hadn’t been an enjoyable experience for Balthazar.

***

Two days later, Pedro and Ursula came over to record and upload the song. After Balthazar had played it, Pedro beamed at him and gave him a high five.

“Thanks so much man, that song is awesome, you’re literally the best friend ever.”

And somehow that simple statement banished all of Balthazar’s tension and discomfort regarding the song and made it all worth it.


End file.
